Lucius Apuleius Platonicus (c. 123/125-c. 180) was a Romanized Berber who described himself as "half-Numidian half-Gaetulian", remembered most for his bawdy picaresque Latin novel, the Metamorphoses, otherwise known as The Golden Ass or, in Latin, the Aureus Asinus (where the Latin word aureus - golden - connoted an element of blessed luckiness)